The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) has released the third paper in its “Protecting Students, Advancing Data” series that promotes the safeguarding of student data all while ensuring that students and their families have transparent and relevant information to make informed college decisions.
As part of IHEP’s Postsecondary Data Collaborative initiative, the brief, “Postsecondary Data Infrastructure: What is Possible Today,” introduces a “Five Safes” framework to guide secure data practices across higher education. This week’s brief examines “safe projects,” “safe people,” “safe settings,” “safe data” and “safe outputs” for institutions to secure their data access and use, and similarly explores examples of how the government and other agencies control data use and analysis.
“When strengthened, the postsecondary data infrastructure could improve how students and parents view institutions and programs, giving them better information when making decisions,” said Dr. Amy O’Hara, author of the report and a research professor in the Massive Data Institute at Georgetown University. “The infrastructure could also facilitate new channels of discovery, enabling data joins and cross-school, cross-cohort and longitudinal analyses that measure student outcomes to see what works, ultimately improving outcomes for students.”
IHEP’s brief points out that, for any data infrastructure to become functional, there must be trust between data providers, intermediaries and users. It notes that the methods in which data are shared and analyzed in higher ed are “strikingly similar” across domains like health care, defense, housing or human services.
Even so, the report adds that a “robust data infrastructure must have strong controls in place” to mitigate any potential risks.
The first of the “Five Safes” that O’Hara introduces in the brief includes building “Safe Projects.” Such projects require “governance protocols to control project requests, review and approval processes, and may require institutional board or ethics board review and approval,” the brief said. Incorporating “clear and thorough” data use agreements (DUA) is similarly crucial for establishing an understanding of acceptable data uses, linkages or scope of analysis.
Institutions can additionally ensure that data users are “Safe People” by screening and training those who will work with the student data, the brief said, noting that researchers today must meet varying requirements to access certain data systems. Screenings or credentialing could include proof of research competence or mandatory training, institutional affiliation, background checks or fingerprinting, for instance.
